In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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that Matthias Baldwin made a more efficient stationary steam engine and John Stetson came up with a new type of hat. Perhaps some young inventor is working at this very moment in a Philadelphia makers shop on an innovative new idea that will spawn a highly successful business, one that will perhaps rival Baldwin Locomotive or Stetson Hat in its impact. EPILOGUE/ PENN’ S VISION @ Above: “Where Art Meets Industry,” homepage of Globe Dye Works website, 2015. The Globe Dye Works building is a former textile dying plant in East Frankford that was operated by the same local family from 1865 until it closed in 2005. It was purchased in 2007 and renovated by a group of Philadelphia craftsmen/ entrepreneurs who specialize in adaptive re-use of industrial buildings. The building now houses offices, artist studios, and small manufacturing shops. Such adaptive re-use is one of the hallmarks of the Maker Movement. Opposite, top: The William Penn statue, manufactured at the Tacony Iron Works, sits in the courtyard of Philadelphia City Hall in 1894, awaiting its placement atop the building. PHOTO POSTCARD, TACONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Opposite, bottom: William Penn looks out over his City of Brotherly Love from atop City Hall. PHOTO BY LAUREN WORK, 2014. Other types of maker spaces can be found throughout Philadelphia. The Jewelry Trades Building at Eighth and Sansom Streets in the heart of the city’s famed Jewelers’ Row district houses the studios of over fifty jewelry artisans. The Globe Dye Works building in East Frankford, home for 140 years to a family-run textile dying business, now houses a number of small workshops, from boat builders to soap makers. The Globe Dye building also houses the offices of the Manufacturing Alliance of Philadelphia. While Alliance President Steve Jurash advocates more broadly for the region’s manufacturing sector, craftsmen and entrepreneurs elsewhere in the building work to develop their products and businesses. One such business is Hand in Hand, maker of soaps and bath and beauty products. The company was founded in 2011 by husband and wife Bill Glabb and Courtney Apple, who originally worked out of their home and now occupy a 6,000 square-foot space in the Globe Dye building. Hand in Hand has five full-time workers, augmented by occasional part timers as needed. Like many in the Maker Movement, it is a socially conscious company. The owners work to ensure that company products are safe and made through fair trade. They also donate a bar of soap and a month of clean water for each product that is purchased. Hand in Hand has worked with Martha Stewart and been featured in her magazine. These maker spaces are the modern versions of the workshops of old, where artisans made things and inventors tinkered with new ideas and products. It was in such spaces And so it goes in Philadelphia manufacturing in the early twenty-first century: older firms continue to make traditional products, using both old and new technologies, while young entrepreneurs develop innovative products and processes. Ancient traditions such as shipbuilding and beer making continue, in both modern and traditional ways. Small artisan manufacturers serve specialized, niche markets, staying close to their customers, much as their colonial predecessors did, while elsewhere in the city large-scale food processing continues and heavy industries make oil tankers, helicopters, and subway cars for national and international markets. Meanwhile, concerted efforts from both the top-down (the energy hub initiative) and bottom-up (the Maker Movement) have the potential to transform the city’s economy and revive its manufacturing sector. Manufacturing remains vital in Philadelphia in the early twenty-first century, with enormous potential for the future. How that potential is realized in the coming years remains to be seen. As this book was being completed in the summer of 2015, Dow Chemical announced that most of the workers at its headquarters on Independence Mall in Old City, the former Rohm & Haas building, were being moved out of the city to suburban locations, a move that seems to signal the beginning of the end of a major presence for Dow in Philadelphia. This presence dates back to Dow’s predecessor Rohm & Haas beginning in 1907 and before that to Rohm & Haas’ predecessor Lenning Chemical in 1819. Meanwhile, Lannett, a growing generic drug manufacturer that was founded in 1942 and has facilities throughout Northeast Philadelphia, is making plans to IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY 96
centralize operations in the buildings in the former IRS complex on Roosevelt Boulevard in Far Northeast Philadelphia that it purchased in 2014. Across the street from the Lannett/IRS complex, food conglomerate Mondelez International shut down its large food processing plant in July 2015, a plant that for generations made cookies for Nabisco and later Kraft Foods. At the same time, Dietz & Watson is finishing construction on its state-of-the-art food production facility a few miles away in Tacony, where it expects to employ some 850 workers. Manufacturing in Philadelphia remains a dynamic, changing environment, as it has since William Penn arrived in 1682 and began establishing manufacturing enterprises in his new colony. When the colossal statue of William Penn, fabricated at the Tacony Iron Works in Northeast Philadelphia, was placed atop Philadelphia City Hall in 1894, the city was at the height of its manufacturing power. Penn looked out over thousands of industrial enterprises—huge mill complexes, mid-size factories, small workshops—all brimming with activity. Smokestacks filled the sky with exhaust from an amazingly diverse range of manufacturing operations wherein hundreds of thousands of workers made an equally amazingly diverse range of products that found their way to all corners of the globe. Philadelphia truly was the Workshop of the World. Now, most of those mills and factories are silent and the vast majority of city residents are engaged in other types of work. Philadelphia is no longer the “greatest manufacturing city in the world.” But manufacturing continues in the city in a variety of settings, as it has for over 330 years. Industries large and small make products, develop new technologies and processes, explore new markets and ideas. William Penn watches it all from his perch atop City Hall. Looking out over the bustling city of industry and enterprise he founded in 1682, could he ever have imagined the rich manufacturing history that would be forged in his City of Brotherly Love? CHAPTER FIVE 97
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IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
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IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
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CONTENTS 4 FOREWORD 6 ACKNOWLEDGEME
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@ Michael A. Nutter, Former Mayor,
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For the historical images that enli
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This is a history of manufacturing
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While other manufacturing centers w
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@ Above: Workers at Midvale Steel p
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aircraft that dates to the earliest
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would hold into the early nineteent
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technology, transportation, and com
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age had joined the Religious Societ
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Philadelphians lived in the city’
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“and many boats, which are useful
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Quaker merchant Thomas Masters purc
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INDUSTRY INVENTORS Manufacturers in
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Quaker upbringing. Known as the “
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MAKING A CASE FOR AMERICAN MANUFACT
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up cotton manufacturing operations
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After receiving a patent for the en
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The Globe Mill on the Cohocksink Cr
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@ Opposite: Detail from 1849 map sh
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of the town’s total population. S
Page 47 and 48: On a positive note, a group of Fran
Page 49 and 50: factories with a powerful energy so
Page 51 and 52: and flagship for Commodore Matthew
Page 53 and 54: @ Left: Penn Steam Engine & Boiler
Page 55 and 56: Garrett & Eastwick Locomotive Works
Page 57 and 58: seen. The episode brought Hagner co
Page 59 and 60: United States, the nation’s de-fa
Page 61 and 62: The turn of the twentieth century p
Page 63 and 64: in various categories at the Centen
Page 65 and 66: makers, 20 stove manufacturers, 12
Page 67 and 68: and lace, in which Kensington manuf
Page 69 and 70: through exploitation of their worke
Page 71 and 72: @ Left: Yard locomotives at Midvale
Page 73 and 74: among the largest in the world at t
Page 75 and 76: factory nearby. This became the lar
Page 77 and 78: she writes of the sad circumstances
Page 79 and 80: @ Clockwise, starting from the top:
Page 81 and 82: BEER AND TOBACCO Beer making contin
Page 83 and 84: MILK AND ICE CREAM Like any major c
Page 85 and 86: the Philadelphia Phillies. Located
Page 87 and 88: and a half later from a city of man
Page 89 and 90: After major cutbacks in the auto in
Page 91 and 92: into countless lunchboxes throughou
Page 93 and 94: hangar space in 1980 at Northeast P
Page 95 and 96: is the nation’s largest manufactu
Page 97: fuel for local industries, current
Page 101 and 102: BOOKS AND ARTICLES Bridenbaugh, Car
Page 103 and 104: Sutcliffe, Andrea J. Steam: The Unt
Page 105 and 106: Penrose, Bartholomew & Thomas shipy
Page 107 and 108: PARTNERS IN BUILDING PHILADELPHIA H
Page 109 and 110: @ Left: An early Kingsbury advertis
Page 111 and 112: PARTNERS IN BUILDING PHILADELPHIA 1
Page 113 and 114: Aerodynamics. The name DeVal was a
Page 115 and 116: packaging and shipping; and nondest
Page 117 and 118: Another step in product advancement
Page 119 and 120: PHILLY CASE From the basement of a
Page 121 and 122: Under Yost’s direction, The Rowla
Page 123 and 124: The story of Tioga Pipe is a classi
Page 125 and 126: neighborhood. The increased product
Page 127 and 128: Humphrys is one of the oldest manuf
Page 129 and 130: The Doherty brothers realized, to s
Page 131 and 132: Centrally located off the Pennsylva
Page 133 and 134: Jersey and Delaware. Outgrowing the
Page 135 and 136: Philadelphia is famous for its appr
Page 137 and 138: injection molded plastic to enter t
Page 139 and 140: had expanded from smaller pieces fo
Page 141 and 142: for many years and they know the fi
Page 143 and 144: furnace as well as a custom flame h
Page 145 and 146: and Salmon Streets. The company wou
Page 147 and 148: The company capitalized on the stra
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discharges. The supercapacitors are
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products that are custom designed t
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Today manufacturing matters, now mo
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LEADERSHIP SPONSORS Historical Publ
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